Today, fourteen public interest organizations put out a statement opposing the Diplomatic Conference on the WIPO Broadcast Treaty. It reads…
The undersigned consumer, public interest and civil liberties organizations, some of whom attended last week's SCCR meeting in Geneva, write to express our concerns about the Committee's decision to propose a 2007 Diplomatic Conference on the proposed WIPO Treaty on the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations. We are concerned about the substance of the treaty, as well as proceeding with this Diplomatic Conference in the face of significant disagreement amongst delegations. Therefore, we ask that the U.S. delegation express its objections to proceeding with a Diplomatic Conference at this time and seek support for that position from other country delegations at the upcoming WIPO General Assembly.
The statement is signed by the following organizations:
American Association of Law Libraries
American Library Association
Association of Research Libraries
Center for Democracy and Technology
Consumer Project on Technology
Consumers Union
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Free Press
IP Justice
Media Access Project
Medical Library Association
Public Knowledge
Special Libraries Association
U.S. PIRG
You can read the full details of the statement here.
Industry folks have also put out their own statement, which can be found here.
Just as a reminder, these statements are a reaction to the last meeting of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyrights and Related Rights (SCCR) on the WIPO Broadcasting Treaty, which Gigi last wrote about, when “[a]t the eleventh hour, SCCR Chairman Jukka Liedes of Finland made a recommendation for a diplomatic conference on the treaty in summer 2007, essentially prohibited any further discussion and gaveled the meeting to an end, declaring the recommendation adopted.”
The next important WIPO meeting is the General Assembly which starts next week from Sept. 25 to Oct. 3.